DACA sellout?

DACA SELLOUT?: Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) heads to the House Triangle today for a 1 p.m. press conference on the fate of the Deferred Action for Children Arrivals program. Gutierrez implored his colleagues all this week to apply swift leverage to save DACA. But when Democratic leaders cut a deal with Trump Wednesday on a spending bill to keep the government funded through December, they lost the best bargaining chip they’re likely to hold for the next three months.

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POLITICO’s Heather Caygle, Seung Min Kim and Elana Schor report that Gutierrez laid into his colleagues at a House Democratic whip team meeting on Thursday morning. “The bond and trust between the Dreamers and the Democratic Caucus is broken,” he said, according to two sources in the room. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) reportedly told House lawmakers that the Dream Act doesn’t yet have 60 votes in the Senate.

Advocates seemed little comforted by Trump’s Nancy Pelosi-inspired tweet Thursday morning (“For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about — No action!”). “We were surprised,” Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, told Caygle, Kim and Schor. “Where did this deal come from? When we have this great leverage to get the Dream Act passed, why is that not at the top of the list? What is the strategy? We need to make sure Dems see this issue as the top priority, like health care.” More from Caygle, Kim and Schor here.

ICE PLANNED MASSIVE RAIDS: Federal immigration officials planned a massive enforcement operation in September targeting 8,400 people, NBC News’ Julia Ainsley and Andrew Blankstein reported Thursday. The series of sweeps — "the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE,” according to an internal document — was set to take place over five days beginning on Sept. 17, NBC reported. Now ICE says the action, called Operation Mega, has been delayed.

ICE rarely issues public statements about planned operations, but it addressed the issue after Ainsley and Blankstein’s story broke. “Due to the current weather situation in Florida and other potentially impacted areas, along with the ongoing recovery in Texas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had already reviewed all upcoming operations and has adjusted accordingly,” the agency said. “There is currently no coordinated nationwide operation planned at this time. The priority in the affected areas should remain focused on life-saving and life-sustaining activities.” The Homeland Security Department has repeatedly stressed that non-criminal immigration enforcement won’t be conducted during the rescue effort in Texas.

Operation Mega may have been planned, at least in part, to goose ICE’s detention numbers. A spending bill passed passed in April funded more than 39,000 detention beds. But the agency’s “average daily population” of detainees — which exceeded 41,000 near the end of the Obama administration — nosedived in May below 34,000, probably because fewer people were crossing the border. As of Aug. 26, the average daily population had crept back up to 38,153 — near the budgeted amount, but not quite there. “ICE officials know that congressional Republicans will demand an explanation if the agency's average detainee population drops too low,” said Kevin Landy, a former ICE assistant director during the Obama administration. “Now the pressure is probably also coming from the Trump White House." More from NBC News here.

OPIOIDS ASSAIL THE WORKFORCE: From Danielle Paquette in the Washington Post: “In a new paper, [Princeton economist Alan Krueger] argues that opioids pose more than just a health threat: They’re benching workers across the country. … The rise in painkiller prescriptions between 1999 and 2015 drove about 20 percent of the drop in men’s workforce participation and 25 percent of women’s, Krueger estimated in the study, out Thursday.” More from Paquette here. Click here to read Krueger’s study.

TRUMP LOSES TRAVEL BAN APPEAL: The 9th Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision that classified grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as “close family” who should temporarily be exempted from Trump’s legally contentious travel ban policy. The three-judge panel also upheld a district court’s decision to allow refugees with a commitment from a refugee agency to avoid the strictures of the policy.

From POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein: "If mothers-in-law clearly fall within the scope of the injunction, then so too should grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins," [the judges] wrote in a joint opinion. "The government does not offer a persuasive explanation for why a mother-in-law is clearly a bona fide relationship, in the Supreme Court’s prior reasoning, but a grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, or cousin is not."

The ruling is a momentary victory for travel ban opponents. Refugee flows could resume in the coming weeks because of the ruling, since 24,000 refugees in the queue already have a commitment from a settlement agency, Gerstein reports. But the president has the power to set refugee levels each year, and Trump will soon decide that number for fiscal year 2018. He could set it at zero. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the travel ban on Oct. 10. More here.

SENATE APPROPRIATORS BUCK TRUMP: Senate Republicans approved a Labor, Education and HHS appropriations bill Thursday that largely maintains Labor Department funding. The bill preserves funding for apprenticeship grants and for the Wage and Hour Division, and even gives a slight increase to Veterans' Employment and Training Services. It’s now headed to the floor. That’s a far cry from the Trump White House’s budget plan to cut DOL’s budget by one-fifth.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) proposed an amendment to fund $1 billion in paid leave grants and to increase funding for worker training programs. That failed on a party-line vote. Other than that, though, Democrats were markedly silent compared to their counterparts on the House side, who prolonged an appropriations markup to 11 hours as they offered dozens of amendments.

LATE-NIGHT AMENDMENTS: A series of immigration-related amendments were tacked onto the House spending bill during a floor session that extended past midnight on Wednesday. The highlights included amendments requiring E-Verify for new federal hires; a funding cutoff to state and local governments that aren’t responsive to federal queries about immigration status; and prioritized funding for a study on the treatment of detainees in federal immigration detention centers (from Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat from New Mexico). The House will debate the amendments next week. Read through all approved and rejected amendments here.

COULD AMAZON CHOOSE YOU?: Amazon is on a hunt for a second headquarters to house around 50,000 employees, the New York Times reports. “In addition to a metropolitan area with more than one million residents, Amazon insists that its new project have on-site access to mass transit, a commute of 45 minutes or less to an international airport and easy access to a major highway or arterial road — no more than two miles,” the Times reports.

“The company is also requesting that the new location have a diverse population and recreational opportunities,” according to the Times. “In other words, it does not want to stray too far from the lifestyle of Seattle, the home of Starbucks and Nordstrom, sandwiched between mountains and water. The headquarters in Seattle has 24 cafes.” Amazon has more than 382,000 employees around the globe, and pledged in January to create 100,000 U.S. jobs over the next 18 months. More from the Times here.

LAYOFF WATCH: ELI LILLY: The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly said Thursday that it plans to cut 3,500 jobs worldwide, including 2,000 in the United States, Peter Loftus reports in the Wall Street Journal. “Indianapolis-based Lilly cited a number of issues that are plaguing many drugmakers, including the need to lower costs and raise investment in new drugs ahead of patent expirations that are expected to erode sales of older products. … Lilly said it expects to achieve most of the U.S. reductions through voluntary early-retirement packages; others will come from site closures and layoffs. Lilly has about 41,241 workers globally, including more than 18,500 in the U.S.” More here.

WHITE WORKING CLASS RED HERRING?: In a forcefully argued, sure-to-be-controversial new essay in the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates disputes the idea that “Trump’s rise was primarily powered by cultural resentment and economic reversal.” Exit polls showed the median household income of Trump supporters was $72,000, which, Coates notes, was $15,000 above the national median. Coates further points out that Trump won “whites making less than $50,000 by 20 points, whites making $50,000 to $99,999 by 28 points, and whites making $100,000 or more by 14 points.“ That means “Trump assembled a broad white coalition that ran the gamut from Joe the Dishwasher to Joe the Plumber to Joe the Banker.” Trump was not the candidate of a resentful white working class, Coates argues; he was the candidate of white America, period. The narrative that an economically bruised white working class put Trump in the White House emerged, Coates argues, because the reality that even affluent white Americans responded favorably to Trump was too raw a story to tell. White Americans favored candidate Trump not in spite of his crude comments, past and present, about blacks, Latinos, and women, Coates argues, but because of them. More here.

INSIDE THE DACA NUMBERS: The Homeland Security Department on Thursday provided reporters with statistics on the number of people currently enrolled in DACA. While the total number of people who have been approved for the program since 2012 is nearly 800,000 (the most relevant figure previously available to news outlets), the number of people with active DACA status at present is closer to 690,000, according to DHS. The reason: some people have moved into a different immigration status, allowed their DACA to expire, or left the country. In addition, roughly 34,000 people have pending initial applications, and 72,000 people have pending renewals.

On renewals: The Trump administration will allow DACA recipients to renew their status if it expires between Sept. 5 and March 5. According to DHS, 154,000 people could be eligible to renew during that time. Dig into more DACA stats here.

About The Author : Ted Hesson

Ted Hesson is an employment and immigration reporter with POLITICO Pro.

Prior to joining POLITICO in October 2016, Hesson spent more than a decade as a writer and editor with a focus on immigration policy. His work has appeared in National Journal, The Atlantic and VICE, among other outlets.

From 2012 to 2015, he worked as immigration editor at Fusion, a joint venture of ABC News and Univision.

Hesson holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree from Boston College.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, he lived in New York City before relocating to Washington, D.C.

In his free time, he enjoys playing guitar, listening to podcasts and practicing Spanish.